


Something Beautiful

by ingoldamn



Category: Death Note
Genre: -Ish, Angst, It's a little sad, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Mentions of crime, Stream of Consciousness, gratuitous use of the word 'fuck', i don't even know what this is or where it came from, mentions of drinking, mentions of drug use, pov matt, sort of, the language is pretty crude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 12:47:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2310143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingoldamn/pseuds/ingoldamn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, every once in a while, something beautiful happens in the world. People will meet and connect and feel and love and life will be beautiful. They’ll look at each other and smile and kiss and it will be gentle and right and perfect.</p><p>Of course that is not how it is for Matt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Beautiful

Sometimes, every once in a while, something beautiful happens in the world. People will meet and connect and feel and love and life will be beautiful. They’ll look at each other and smile and kiss and it will be gentle and right and perfect.

Of course that is not how it is for Matt, because Matt has apparently, somehow, managed to piss off every single god in existence, and they have all cursed him.

Okay, so maybe it’s not quite that bad, but seriously, did he have to fall in love with the smartest, most bad-tempered, ridiculous, irritating, stupid fucking blond, who has ever been alive? Like, seriously?

God has to hate him. Or maybe this is proof that God really doesn’t exist.

Because Matt has been in love with Mello since the first time he laid eyes on him, when Mello was just a nine-year-old runt and Matt was an apathetic, eleven-year-old mess.

And Matt is broken, okay? He’s been broken since before Watari picked him up at the police station when he was eleven. He’s been broken since before he went through seven fosterfamilies in as many months. He’s been broken since before his mother set the house on fire and killed herself. He’s been broken since before his mother’s husband left them.

Sometimes, he thinks he was born broken.

Because he remembers finding out that he was the result of his mother cheating on her husband. Remembers the way, the husband used to look at him with something like disgust, making him feel like he was born wrong. Remembers how his mother used to snarl angrily at him, whenever he dared to ask her for something, making him feel like he was the source of every bad thing in her life. Remembers how the husband used to call his mother a ‘goddamned whore’ and call Matt a ‘stupid bastard kid’.

And then the husband had left them. Matt hadn’t been more than nine years old, then, and doesn’t remember it very clearly. He remembers only snapshots, glimpses of their shitty-as-fuck house, the husband wearing his overcoat with a suitcase in his hand, and Matt’s mother on the floor, pleading with the husband to stay. But the husband hadn’t cared, had looked at her with disdain, and at Matt with disgust, and left.

Matt’s mother had changed, then. She’d become like a porcelain doll. Pale and thin and translucent, sitting in an old armchair, looking out the window, sucking down nicotine from cigarette after cigarette, emptying wineglass after wineglass, always waiting for her husband to return.

He never did.

So, after a while, she turned on Matt. Not physically, no, never physical, never violent. She never hit him. She just looked through him, like he wasn’t there, like he was just a ghost. But when she spoke, which was rare, extremely rare, she blamed him. Said it was his fault, her husband left. Said he was the reason for all her misery. Said the day he’d been born was the worst day of her life.

And then came the fire.

It was just Matt’s luck that he’d been out, wandering the streets, contemplating whether or not to steal a new gameboy down at the electronics store, when the fire started. When he got home there was nothing left, except a burned-out shell.

The police said it was an accident. That his mother had dropped a lit cigarette into her glass of whatever alcohol she’d been drinking, and that that had started it.

Matt knew that wasn’t true.

His mother had been dead long before the fire. She had died that night, when her husband left. It had just been a matter of a time, before it was made official.

And Matt had been sent to one orphanage, and then to another, until the social workers had finally managed to find him a fosterfamily. The first family didn’t work out though, so they sent him to another. And when that fucked up too, he was sent to another. And another. And another. Seven fosterfamilies in all, over the course of seven months.

They all sucked.

The last was the best, except for their stupid kid, who had been jealous of Matt’s hacking abilities (just because he’d managed break into the Pentagon) and had told his parents, that Matt had tried to kill him (he even showed a ring of bruising around his neck as proof, and wow, Matt thought, say what you want about that kid, but he was damn dedicated to getting rid of the orphan), and then the social workers brought Matt back to the orphanage.

He’d been there for three months when, just one day after his eleventh birthday, two coppers showed up and took him to the station because, apparently, he was suspected of having hacked several unhackable websites (and damn, he thought, he really should have covered his tracks better).

That was where Watari found him, and brought him to Wammy’s House.

And Matt didn’t relax at first, although Roger gave him a new gameboy and a computer and let him play as many videogames as he wanted, because honestly? It was too good to be true. He always had to leave in the end, whether it was because he was too weird (fosterfamily 3) or because he got in trouble (fosterfamily 5) or because some stupid kid got jealous and wanted him gone.

But in the end it didn’t matter, because then there was Mello. And from the second they first locked eyes (across the common room - how fucking romantic) Matt knew he was lost.

Because Mello is fire and ice and passion and anger and a razor-sharp intellect and an inferiority complex the size of the universe, all neatly packed into one lithe, muscular, blond body. He is a million bad habits, all rolled into one, and Matt fucking loves it.

It’s stupid and reckless and goddamn unhealthy because Mello leaves. He becomes a fixture in Matt’s life, the centre of his universe, the thing around which his entire life revolves, and then he fucking leaves, and Matt is broken.

He is so fucking broken. And he hates himself for it, because, fuck it all, he is turning into his goddamn mother; broken beyond repair, because the guy he loves (fuck everything, he fucking loves Mello, okay?) left him. How pathetic is that?

Mello is fourteen, almost fifteen, when he leaves, and Matt is just seventeen when he follows him. He leaves Wammy’s House behind, because there’s nothing left for him there, nothing he cares about.

He steals a lot of money by hacking some rich guy’s bank account, and uses the money to get himself to America. Once he’s there, he buys an apartment in New York and quickly makes a name for himself in the criminal underworld as the world’s best hacker. He makes a fuck-ton of money and throws most of it away. Long as he’s got his cigarettes (ha, just like his mother), his computer, a place to stay, and all the videogames and consoles and electronics as his heart desires, he’s good (or at least, that’s what he tells himself).

Then, of course, Mello calls him, right as Matt is starting to settle into a sort of life (a life that consists of alcohol and work and videogames and meaningless sex and a fuck-ton drugs, but still, a life).

Mello calls him, asking… no, begging for help. And that’s what does it, because Mello is nothing if not proud and the fact that he’s begging, actually begging (he even said please), means that he really, truly needs Matt and fuck if Matt can say no to that kind of plea (he knows exactly how stupid it is, how reckless, and no, he really doesn’t give a fuck).

It hits him, when he’s driving towards the address Mello gave him, that he really is turning into his mother and damn, that is a sad thought. But the similarities are there. He used to think she was weak, pathetic, that she should have been stronger, but now… now he kind of understands her. Because when Mello left him, well… Matt’s done all sorts of stupid shit, trying to move on or forget or whatever the fuck he’s been trying to do, in the past eighteen months.

To be honest, he doesn’t remember most of it. It’s all just a blur of drugs and alcohol and videogames and pretty people who meant shit to him.

But then there’s Mello, who is still gorgeous and still bad-tempered and still a fucking prick, who wants to prove himself or beat Near or kill Kira or whatever the fuck it is he wants to do. And Matt is right there with him, because he just cannot stop himself.

And when Mello turns to him one night, drunk on whiskey amd high on cocaine, and says ‘you really love me, don’t you?’ Matt can find no reason to deny it. So he kisses Mello, and kissing is just like everything else he’s ever done with the fucker - it’s rough and painful and bitter and chocolatey and a fucking fight for dominance, because they’re both used to being on top, and neither will back down without a fight.

As it turns out fucking Mello works much the same way. And Matt fucking loves it, because he’s an idiot with no sense of self-preservation. No, fuck that, he knows exactly how stupid it is, how unhealthy, knows it’s gonna get him killed, but he absolutely doesn’t give a shit, because it’s better than drugs, better than alcohol, better than the warmth of a thousand willing bodies, better than the rush of a dangerous job well done.

And when he’s sitting in his car at last, watching the police surrounding him, smoking his last cigarette, he knows he’s a dead man, and he knows that if he’d just stayed the fuck away from Mello, it wouldn’t have come to this.

Still, nothing he can do about it now. He smiles sardonically. Ah, well, screw it all. Might as well die for Mello. Better than dying for nothing.

Taking a deep breath, sucking the nicotine as deep into his lung as he can, he steps out of the car.

'Since when are the Japanese police allowed to carry such fine arms?' he asks, feigning idiocy. He was always good at feigning idiocy.

No one laughs.

Matt sighs, leaning on the car door.

'I'm an accomplice in Takada's abduction. I expect you've got a lot of questions…' he continues, but they shoot before he can finish. His last thought, as he falls to the ground, is that he didn't get to finish his cigarette.

Then everything disappears.

**Author's Note:**

> Death Note was my first manga/anime and also the thing that got me into the whole fanfiction-thing. Matt/Mello was my first otp.  
> I hadn't read it in years, before I picked it up again three days ago. Immediately after finishing vol. 12, I sat down and wrote this.  
> It was supposed to be short and sweet or whatever, but in the end I had... this...  
> Hope y'all liked it.
> 
> [tumblr](http://fratboy-of-orome.tumblr.com)


End file.
